Thread: TD5SPY - Gauges - review

Not really sure how to start this thread, nor whether I should(yet) .. but it's been a few months now and I have good and bad experience here.

TD5Spy website for info.

I found this TD5Spy doodad. It's either a dongle or a full kit(called ALLSPY).
The straight up TD5SPY is just a dongle that gives you many gauges at a glance.
Yep, Nanocom does this too, but this thing does it a bit better.
You just HAVE too use a phone/tablet/device of some type for the screen display.
It's bluetooth, and for non techy types a bit convoluted to get it up and running in some instances.
It works on BTLE. Took me nearly forever to get the Galaxy S24 to connect to the dongle. Had to find app permissions, and all manner of advanced settings that I know nothing about.

ps. it also works on iPhone too.
Anyhow, once app permissions were found and allowed, worked very well.

The TD5SPY is just the dongle.

Anyhow, gives a ton of gauge info on each screen, you can sort of configure one screen to your preferred needs(ie. add/remove various gauges).
As I've used it for a few months now, it's quite accurate.
Same coolant temps/speed/revs, etc as the nanocom shows, so no issues in it's ability.

it has very limited ability to do diagnostics, so don't expect nanocom level ability there. Will read any fault code that I'm aware of, and can clear.

ALLSpy device is that and more but needs to be wired in for the ability to add extra sensors(eg. oil press, oil temps, egt, etc) then the rest is std electronically communicated readouts.

As I have 2 TD5s(D2 and D2a) I bought two of them ... and this is where the ever so slightly negative part of the review comes into the thread.

Technically the the non working issue is not a problem with the TD5Spy dongle, but it is the problem.
On the D2a, both dongles work flawlessly. A dongle will have a mac address setup for the bluetooth connection to phone.
Both dongles work on the D2a.

For about a month it worked fine on the D2. Suddenly one day it stopped mid drive. Just came up no connection and kept trying.
No problem, car still works, look into it later. Spent better part of a day trying to figure out how to get it to work on the D2 .. nothing!

Check both dongles on D2a, work fine.
Problem must be with the D2 then, and it is the problem. Nanocom works fine tho.

Anyhow, after a few emails with a chap named Rob(from TD5Spy), and very helpful bloke he is ... turns out that the diag port pins on the dongle are not quite as sturdy as the nanocom is.
So there is a slight issue with the diag port on the D2, and nanocom works, but Spy dongle doesn't.

One day I'll look at replacing the port on the D2 with the spare out of the parts car and see if that sorts it.

This is to say, it had a problem, but it wasn't the actual problem in a roundabout manner.
Had I not had the two units, nor the 2 D2s to figure this issue out, I'd have assumed it was the dongle, and gone through the drama of sending it back getting money back and having nothing, or getting another unit and having same issue .. etc.

But at least Rob and I traced the issue to the diag port.

Slight annoyance #2 is the inability to have the data log saved or downloaded locally to my own device(s).
That is, it's all web based.
So the device saves data logs, but saves them to itself, you cant see them yourself on your device(s), and at some point it will upload the datalog to the TD5Spy website where you can then see them.
Hopefully at some point the developers can set up a way to save logs to our own devices. Not important, just a small peeve.

Handiest thing(I think) is having the ability to watch fuel economy. Has both instant readout and average, and so far the average has been spot on, or 0.1km/lt out(I use km/lt, not lt/100km).
I don't understand lt/100 routines.

The other slight annoying aspect is the inability to actually turn off voice alerts, even tho it's turned off. But this is easily bypassed.

Overall, the entire system is very neat and tidy. Yeah, you need to use a phone. Any phone tablet device will do tho, so doesn't HAVE to be your phone.
if you had, for example, and android head unit, you could use that.

The apps aren't store loaded apps either. You get an APK for android, or whatever for Apple.
As I said earlier tho, if your phone is more hardened against apps, it's a bit more tricky to set it up and get connected.
My old Galaxy S8 connected immediately to the BTLE dongle... S24 needed more knowledge about setting it all up.

Would I recommend it as a set of gauges .. if you want fuel/oil pressures and egt .. no! if you just want gauges, mainly coolant temps (and for me fuel economy gauge) for sure.
It even has a system to set full level and low fuel level in the system so if your gauge is not showing accurately, could be an alternative to replacing sender unit for a while if the app doesn't just rely on the sender for fuel level info.

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

So I bought one of these too. I'll be really checking to see how accurate the fuel consumption is. That would be a big help.

I've found(so far) that it's fairly accurate.

It will give you the option to set a fuel tank level too, so you can set up a gauge for keeping an eye on distance to empty.

I live in a fairly flat area and most of my driving has been in this area, very very occasionally dealing with a hill or two.
I'm not driving the D2a all that much, annoyingly it's the best car I have to drive.

This not driving a lot(ie. occasionally) and shorter trips seem to make it less accurate.

But it's always been within half a klm/lt for me. I sometimes do stuff up in not starting up the program all the time, or it doesn't start up quickly enough to keep track of every second of run time too.

On a 500+ trip to Melb and back tho one time, it was spot on for me.

I did 11klm/lt(or 9-ish lt/100 for those that prefer that), and it showed 10.9 klm/lt for that trip. I had two engine off times on this trip.

The way the system works(if you haven't seen it yet) is that you have an app on a device(phone/tablet/whatever) and you need to start the app up after the dongle has booted.
The dongle will boot up with ign on, or engine start. It turns itself off after you've switched off after some specific time. Sorry can't recall how long.

I haven't tried to get it 100% spot on(yet), but it does have an adjustment section for fuel consumption, speed and diesel used.

eg. if you only stop for a short time, eg. for fuel fillup, you can start the app again before ign on or engine start. But after some time, it boots itself down eg. overnight if you try to connect to the dongle before ign or engine on, it won't find the device(or connect to it).

There are some other small annoyances, otherwise mostly worth the time/effort and cost.

I still haven't had the chance to try to fix the issue with the D2, where it won't work any more. Developer and I have seemed to pinpoint it to the OBD connector on the D2. It worked fine for about a month then stopped and now won't work at all. Dongle is fine(confirmed on the D2a), just not on the D2. I have two units and other dongle, that I use on the D2a doesn't work on the D2 either. Nanocom works tho. Dev said that pins on nanocom are more heavy duty. I quickly tried to tighten up the sockets, and gave it a spray, on the D2 but still nothing(yet). I have a plan to change the OBD socket on the D2 to see if it helps in any way.

On my Galaxy phone I had to enable some specific bluetooth setting(can't recall what it was called) but the connection wasn't automatic like some other Bt devices can be. So watch out for that issue.
Also, if you want to see the logging stuff, you have to enable gps tracking and some other personal info related settings. The other major annoyance is that you can't download your tracklog data. It's only maintained online for some reason.

I did ask dev about this and they never responded, but I asked the question whilst he was on holidays, AND my issue with the other dongle no longer working on the D2, so it may have been missed.